Rules of grammar, notes on vocabulary, and observations about the mechanics of writing.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Parallelism -- another example

From yesterday's News Sentinel:

"Center Kelley Cain's 6-foot-6 stature affords her high-percentage shots. But she's still overcoming the effects of reconstructive knee surgery last year as well as colliding with a practice player earlier this month."

In The Elements of Style, Elementary Principle of Composition No. 15 is

Express coordinate ideas in parallel form.

We could fix the sentence above by changing "colliding" to "a collision."